by Ted Peters
“Where are your shoes?” asked Leona.
“Home.”
“Step on the grass, quickly.”
Once on the grass, Cupid relaxed. Leona bent down for an eye level conversation. “Would you like a fudgesickle?”
Cupid’s head nodded up and down vigorously. Leona thought for a moment. “Cupid, would you go down into the church basement and find a child’s chair for me? Then, bring it up and put it in the parking lot behind the car. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Soon the chair was in the parking lot and Leona had returned with a fudgesickle. Leona’s eyes scanned what she could see of the neighborhood. Nothing appeared to be moving. Buck lay in the grass with his tongue drooping from an open mouth. Midnight watched everything through the picture window within the air conditioned house. Leona concluded that a sufficient level of privacy prevailed.
“Take off your tee shirt,” she said to Cupid. Cupid removed her shirt, leaving her in her shorts and bare feet. Leona directed her to sit in the small chair and handed her the fudgesickle. With the concentration of a pilot landing a plane, the little girl began a systematic licking of her cold treat. The sun beat down and melted the fudgesickle faster than she could eat. Chocolate dripped and ran like rivers down her cheeks, shoulders, and tummy.
Cupid followed some of the chocolate rivers with her fingers, licking the retrieved taste. One finger made its home in her navel. She looked down. “Why do I have a belly button, Pastor Lee?”
“Cupid, when God was making you he gave you a belly button so that you’d have a place to put the salt when you eat celery in bed.”
Cupid looked up at Leona with a puzzled expression. “I don’t like celery. I like fudgesickles.”
“Well, Cupid, when we grow up our tastes change. Maybe someday you’ll like to eat celery in bed. Then, you’ll be ready.”
“Oh.”
With the chocolate treat nearly gone, Leona picked up the hose and removed the nozzle. She took the fudgesickle stick and then squirted Cupid. The little one sat in the chair, welcoming the shower, wiggling at the combination of hot sun and cool water. She stood up when Leona motioned to her and went through the de-fudging with a giggle. Leona’s smile of inner joy and outer satisfaction was a perfect testament to her sense of full presence to the moment.
What neither Leona nor Cupid knew, and what even Buck was unaware of, was that they in fact were not alone. An almost silent drone hovering above was signaling a computer screen two blocks away. Its camera monitored every movement of Leona, Buck, Midnight, and, of course, Cupid. Watching that computer screen: Khalid Neshat.
Chapter 66
Chicago
Leona’s ears picked up the noise of activity coming from the concrete stair well at the rear of the church. Soon Hillar emerged along with Owl, the African American teenage girl who spent nearly as much time around the parsonage as Cupid. The two teenagers were carrying a ping-pong table. Buck was following. After a couple trips, the green table was set up in the parking lot, complete with net. Both the boy and the girl wore only bathing suits and flip flops.
“We’re gonna sweat and then squirt,” proclaimed Hillar as he waved his ping-pong paddle. Owl took her place at the street end of the table, just waiting for Hillar to begin. In minutes the ball was clacking back and forth over the net.
Leona picked up the hose. “Should I squirt now?”
“No,” bellowed Hillar. Wait until after the rubber game.”
Leona had just finished washing the car when she heard a cuss word. She turned just in time to see Hillar pick up the ball and serve. The ball bounced on Hillar’s side but then crashed into the net. “Shit!” hollered Hillar.
The tattooed teenager with the spiked hair tossed the ball again and then swung the paddle level with the ground. His serve clipped the net and bounced off on to the asphalt. “Shit!” he said, while slamming the paddle edge on the table top. Buck raced to retrieve the ball.
Leona stopped to watch. Once the ball was retrieved from Buck’s mouth and Hillar had hit the net for the third time in a row, he yowled, “Goddamit!” This time he slammed the paddle on the table top so hard it splintered and broke. Owl looked at Hillar with a relaxed stare, as if to tell him, “I’m waiting.”
“Do you need a new paddle, Quazzie, dear?” said Leona in a singsong voice.
With a growl Hillar disappeared into the church basement and returned with a new paddle.
Soon the click and clack of the ball on the tabletop resumed. Leona began spraying Cupid with the hose while she twirled and giggled.
Then the pastor heard a string of cussing that shocked even her experienced ears, “God damned son-of-a-bitching fuck’n shit!” It came from Hillar’s mouth. The pastor marched over and yanked the paddle from the angry teenager’s hand.
“For the sake of Belgrade, Quaz, you’re turning the air blue. “Why don’t you just stop it?”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“Those words just come firing up like sky rockets from my gut. I can’t help it.”
“That’s not true, Hillar. When cuss words come up from, I don’t know where, just stop ’m. Hammer ’m back down to where they came from. You don’t need to cuss if you don’t want to.”
“Yes, I do.”
Leona just stared affectionately at the teenager unable to control himself. She rested her left hand on his right shoulder. Owl walked around the table and added her hand to the other shoulder.
“Pastor Lee, it feels like a force coming up like a jack-in-the-box; and I can’t slam the lid down on it.”
“Take a deep breath, Quaz.” Hillar complied. She continued. “Now, you’ve got all the oxygen in your brain that it needs. Ask yourself, ‘do I want to cuss like this?’”
“No.”
“Then put a stop to it right now. Are you ready to play again?”
“I think so.”
In no time ball clacking and teenaged laughing ensued.
Chapter 67
The Cloud
“Choong Lo will join us for today’s conference call,” announced Lionel Chang once the TaiCom syndicate had assembled at their respective computer sites. “Now that the iron curtain of secrecy has been dropped—I assure you that the encryption of this conversation is secure from hacking—I would like to report current progress.” Mumbles of greeting and gratitude followed.
Khalid Neshat smiled. He was looking at his laptop screen, listening on his ear buds through Choong Lo’s implant.
Chang continued. “It appears that our two Mossad spies have been interviewed and disciplined by their superiors. The two reported that the intelligence they received from their implants led them to execute the bombing plot against the Qatari pipe line, not the Islamic pipeline. This was no accident. They received disinformation from our satellite. They were already disposed to carry out this act of sabotage, to be sure; but the satellite intelligence led to this colossally counterproductive execution. It appears that we at TaiCom have a mole. Or, more accurately, we have in our midst not just a mole but an excavator.”
Khalid Neshat’s name was verbalized repeatedly.
“This places us in more than merely an awkward position,” said John Blair. “First, TaiCom will no longer be trusted by Mossad. And when other security agencies hear the facts, they will be more than a little reluctant to enter our clinical trial let alone order our product once it is proven. Second, in spy circles this will give Transhumanism a bad name. The Transhumanist movement might become associated with malfunction if not treachery.”
“I can’t wait to see how Saturday Night Live will handle this, if the news ever gets out,” said Buzz Kidd.
“As you can imagine,” Chang said while regaining leadership of the interchange, “I have expressed my apologies to our Mossad contact and promised to rectify our communications network. This means that we at TaiCom must find Doctor Neshat quickly and persuade him to cease his perfidious activities.”
“If Doctor Neshat is both a murderer and a traitor, perhaps you might try a permanent mode of persuasion, Lionel,” added Abnu Sharma.
“May I ask Mister Lo a question,” posed Geraldine Bourne.
“Yes, of course,” answered Choong Lo. “Anything.”
“What is your experience with the chip I implanted in your brain. Any pain? Unusual sensations? Problems with access?”
“No problems at all, Doctor Bourne. Sometimes I feel a sensation when it is activated by a transmission, which only comes to alert me to pay attention. Otherwise it’s benign.”
“Do you feel you can control the memory chip? Or, do you feel it controls you?”
“Thank you for asking. Actually, I don’t know. I am told by others that sometimes I appear to them as a completely different person. I don’t remember these incidents. It seems that I just black out. Suddenly I return to consciousness and I notice that time has elapsed. If it’s true what others tell me, then it must be the case that the chip takes over, I black out, and I don’t relate to what the chip does to me.”
“Are you comfortable with this, Mister Lo.”
“Absolutely not. No one likes to lose self-control. As soon as this experiment is complete, I will request that the chip be removed. Will you do that for me, Doctor Bourne.”
“Of course, Mister Lo. Thank you for your frankness.”
Chapter 68
The Cloud
“We have two more items of business,” interposed Chang. “Doctor Bourne will report on our clinic location plans.”
“Yes,” said Bourne. “During the period of clinical trials, we want zero exposure to the public. We want zero supervision by medical authorities. We may even wish to keep our operations secret during the first period of sales if it turns out our principal customers come from intelligence gathering agencies. With this in mind, I have hired a staff including nursing personnel who will be paid well both to support me and to maintain secrecy. Each one is a committed Transhumanist. We will set everything up in an ordinary house in the Dalmatian Islands just off the coast of Croatia. The precise location will remain known only to those of us who come and go. We are ready for our next customer. I mean, we are ready for our next clinical trial.”
“How skilled will your assistants be?” asked Olga Louchakova. “Will they be able to perform the implantation procedure in your absence? Must you be on site?”
“No, I don’t have to be on site. I will guide the surgical procedure from my home in Canada via video screen. This has become common practice in today’s medicine. My Dalmatian surgical nurse has the professional prerequisites. I have the expertise. At some point I might even transfer my expertise to a satellite transmission directly into the brain of a nurse with one of our deep brain implants.” Bourne laughed.
“Before we sign off,” interrupted Chang. “Buzz, would you report on a new branch of research that we’re planning.”
“Yes. Thanks. Now that we have virtual proof of concept, we’d like to begin experimenting on children. If a school child attends class with one of our brain implants, will classroom interaction lead to increased intelligence? An active and intelligent brain relies on strong neurocircuits, and neurocircuitry is partially established by repetitive thinking. Thinking actually structures the brain for more thinking. It’s kinda like exercising to make stronger muscles. Our theory is that if a child thinks frequently about complex data—and we provide data in complex figurations in the implant—then the resulting build up of circuitry in the brain will prompt the leap in intelligence we’re hoping for. What we want in the next stage of our clinical trial is to experiment on school children.”
“Would you like to have some implants in place before school opens in September?” asked Louchakova.
“That would be rushing it,” said Kidd. “But, in the best case scenario, yes. The problem, of course, is that no set of parents would approve of sending their child offshore for surgery even for a clinical trial. We’ve got work to do on our human subjects protocal.”
Chang took over. “We think that the education market will be so much larger than the espionage market, that we should be looking ahead. If the Transhumanist idealists among us are going to buy in to TaiCom’s product leadership, then implants for the education market would best fit both the H+ vision and our bank accounts.”
Chapter 69
Chicago
“In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.” It was Muzaffar Haq. Leona responded to Muzaffar’s visage on her Skype screen, “In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.”
Professor Haq was dressed in a brown suit, white shirt, and brown tie. “I see you’re dressed up for something important, Muzaffar. Aren’t you going to sweat in that hot LaHore sun?”
“My office is air conditioned,” responded the Pakistani biology professor. “I’ve got to go to a departmental meeting later today. That’ll be air conditioned too. Can’t think clearly without AC. Now, how is my favorite Lutheran shepherd and her flock this day?”
“Just fine, Muzaffar. Got a question for you. It’s a Muslim question. Is it possible for a Muslim to become a non-believer or even an atheist and still be a Muslim? Many Jews do it. But, can a Muslim?”
“Oh, that hurts, Leona. But, as you can imagine, there are various levels of personal commitment in Islam just as there are in your Christian churches. What we teach and what we personally hold in our hearts and minds could differ. I dare say that most devout individuals don’t understand let alone accept everything in either the Qu’ran or the Bible. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, of course. But, let me be more specific. Could a Shia cease to believe yet still behave like a religious fanatic?”
“I bet you have a particular individual in mind.”
“Yes, of course. But, you don’t know him. I’m just trying to do some profiling,” she said.
“Both you and I believe that the one God is a God of mercy. We’ve talked about this many times before, Lee. So, I should think your Shia friend could rely upon the most merciful One to forgive him. You did say it was a ‘him’ I think. God can forgive us for finding belief difficult. Putting our faith in God is quite difficult for most of us in this postmodern world of ours.”
“Yes, it’s a him in this case,” said Leona. “You’re not exactly answering my question, Muzaffar. Knowing that God forgives us in our unbelief is comforting, but my concern lies elsewhere. I guess I’m asking something like this: can you produce religious fanaticism without religion?”
“Well, Leona,” said Muzaffar, “can you produce smoke without fire, or at least something hot? Can you produce wool without sheep? Can you produce wetness without water?”
“What are you saying, Muzaffar?”
“If you see fanaticism, you see religion. It just might not be a religion with a name on it. If the name on it is Christianity, the real religion might be American patriotism. If the name on it is Judaism, the real religion might be Israel. If the name on it is Islam, the real religion might be the tribe or sect or something like that. Some people are fanatical about the Chicago Cubs, and baseball itself becomes a kind of religion for Cubs fans.”
“As you well know, Muzaffar, I sometimes find myself worshipping at Wrigley Field,” said Leona. “This raises the problem of evil. The Cubbies have won only one World Series in a century. This means those of us who believe in the Cubs have to endure a hundred lean years just to get one fat year. Cub fans suffer for their faith.”
After pausing to chuckle, Muzaffar continued pensively. “I have another thought, Lee. Sometimes I wonder if fanaticism can itself become its own religion. Fanatics, when together in a group, feed off their shared outrageousness. Just a thought.”
“You may have the right thought, Muzaffar, even though it explains the group but not the loner,” said Leona. “Be that as it may, I need to go now. May God be with you.”
“And with you too.”
Chapter 70
“I’ve been visiting Transhumanist websites, Pastor Lee.” It was Hillar talking to Leona in the parsonage living room. Midnight sat on the sofa top watching the action from her imaginary throne. Buck sat at the feet of Owl, who was stroking his ears. Hillar exclaimed, “Look here!”
Leona positioned herself to see over Hillar’s shoulder while he punched computer keys on his laptop, even though the projector lit up the entire west wall of the parsonage living room with the computer’s image. “See! The Transhumanists wanna take control of matter at the atomic level so they can improve humanity through technological innovation. This is great! Look: cybernetics; genetic interference; space colonization; autonomous self-replicating robots; uploading minds into computers; and overcoming death through cryonics and radical life extension. This is just like The Matrix movie, but it’s real.”
“Is it really real?” challenged Leona.
“Of course, Pastor Lee. Look. I bet I could show some movies tonight on our wall here. Wanna see Transcendence or Her or Robocop again?”
The front door opened with a startling sound. Graham leaned in to say, “Lee, you’d better come quickly. We’ve got a problem. Cupid did not come home for supper. She seems to be missing.”
Leona and Buck both leapt up and followed Graham out the parsonage door, into the parking lot, and north on Burnham Avenue three doors to Cupid’s home. Entering through the front door, Graham and Leona along with Buck found Cupid’s mother, Victoria Walker, seated on the living room couch with Cupid’s baby sister in her arms. Victoria’s puffy eyes told the story.
Cupid played in the neighborhood much of the day, spending considerable time in or around Trinity Church. Leona had seen Cupid, but that was midday. Leona had no knowledge of Cupid’s whereabouts during the late afternoon or early evening. Cupid did not return home for lunch or dinner. Mrs. Walker was more than a little worried.
